


Like A Ruptured Vessel

by corvidcall (anathema15)



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Post-Finale, Series Spoilers, hitchcock lays in the mud and cries while dissociating wildly and i have a good time, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 16:26:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8379289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anathema15/pseuds/corvidcall
Summary: And when its time came I could see it happen
  
  Blossoms black and sweet as Texas crude
  
  I saw the future flowering like a ruptured vessel
  
  Somebody’s gonna get screwed
  
  It won’t be me
  
  Someday I am going to walk out of here free

Hitchcock has plenty of time to think, as he rides his horse out of Marielda.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from the song "Black Pear Tree" by The Mountain Goats

Edmund rushes out of Marielda, bag half-packed at best, riding on the back of a horse he despises, across Samot's bridge and into the greater continent. He's still feverish, still sick, still half-dead, but filled with a purpose he feels he's forgotten until just now. He needs to find Ethan.

_ "You know none of this works if we hide things from each other." _   But none of it worked if they were apart, either.  _ Edmund _ didn't work if they were apart.

His memories from Samothes's forge are messy and vibrant, mixing with his own as he rode further away from Marielda, laid across his vision like panels of stained glass, and he rides, and he rides, and he rides.

Samothes and Samot weep at Samol’s impending death, and Ethan, after they lost their father, face splotchy and red from crying, but Edmund hasn’t seen him shed a tear. He’s trying to be strong, and that makes Edmund want to cry more than anything else.

Smothes teaching Maelgwyn to sword fight, and Edmund helping Ethan practice dancing, because this grift won’t work if they don’t both have the same skills. Ethan steps on Edmund’s foot and swears as his brother laughs.

Night falls, and he sleeps on the ground, like they did back in the army- although, in the army, they at least had the benefit of a  _ tent. _ Now, he sleeps under the stars, eyeing both his horse and the gathering clouds on the horizon with equal wariness. It’s strange to be alone, for once. He can’t remember the last time he was alone like this, without even the potential for him to go find Ethan if he wanted. There’s just… him. Just Edmund.

( _ “It’s not- it’s not like you’re  _ half _ a person, okay?” he says, after a few too many glasses of cheap champagne, “It’s like… you’re a whole person, but only half of the time.” _

_ “Edmund, that’s… kinda sad, actually.” Aubrey’s had maybe half a drink and is already looking tipsy. _

_ “I’m Ethan, actually.” _

_ “No, you’re not.” _

_ Edmund laughs, delighted, for once, at the ruse being discovered and understood, but Aubrey doesn’t look amused. Just… thoughtful. Pensive, perhaps.  _

_ “If you’re only ‘Captain E. Hitchcock’ half of the time,” she says, slowly, “What are you the rest of the time?” _

_ For the life of him, he can’t remember how he answered her. _ )

The next morning, the sky is grey with clouds, and he eats a piece of bread and cheese he packed, looking over Ethan’s map as he does, before hopping back on the horse and continuing his journey. He’s still feverish, still swimming between dream and memory and reality, but he can’t stop. 

Samothes, smiling at Primo on the train, and Ethan, smiling at him in front of the school, proud, proud, so proud. The school had been Edmund’s idea; they needed  _ something _ to do after leaving the army, after all, and having one of them teach dancing and one of them teach dueling seemed perfectly suited to the things they were best at- working together, but differently, two halves of the same whole, two pieces of the same machine. He already misses the school, which leads to him missing Caroline, which leads to him missing all of the 6ix, which leads to him missing Marielda. He never thought he’d miss it, with its impossible geometry and constantly reconfiguring streets, it’s Lance Nobles and Pala-dine, but here he is, probably never going to go back, and simply  _ aching. _

Although that could just be the half-healed wound across his throat.

Thunder claps above him, and it starts to rain.

 

Ethan had wanted to join the army, really. He sold it to Edmund with the glory and the chance to look dashing atop a horse, but they both knew that he really just  _ believed. _ Edmund remembers Samothes giving a speech to the troops, bright eyes scanning over the troops, locking on Ethan in the front as Captain Hitchcock, and Edmund in the back, trying his best to be unnoticeable. Edmund also remembers the look on Samothes’s face when Maelgwyn stabbed him. It all went wrong. It all went so wrong.

The rain pours down upon him, and it’s hard to see through it.

He presses on, thinking vaguely of winters with his brother when they were children, the cold, dry air making his nose bleed, and Ethan, wiping his face with a damp cloth and laughing softly. 

“Aw, c’mon, Ed,” he said, “Chin up. We’re Hitchcocks. We’re always alright. And, besides- you’ve got me. Everything’s fine.”

The rain doesn't let up, and neither does he, and later, when both he and the horse are exhausted, he slips, slowly, from the saddle, and into the mud below.

The horse is well-trained, thankfully, and circles back around again, waiting for her rider to get back on. He doesn’t. Instead, he lays there and closes his eyes. He wants life to go back to normal, to how it was, when he had friends and a family and a purpose. He wants to not have lied to Ethan, to not have left Marielda, to not have made whatever grave mistakes lead him to this exact point in his life.

He lays there, in the mud under the pouring rain, feverish and hungry and cold and alone, and he  _ weeps. _

And the next day, the fever finally breaks, and he feels like a human being again, like he owns his body instead of merely being a passenger in it.

And the next day, he finds a river and washes the mud off his clothes and his hair, and finally feels like  _ himself _ again, even if he’s still not entirely sure who that is.

And the next day, he finds the house in the woods, finds his brother, finds a new person to be.

 

And the next day, Caroline Fairplay picks the lock on Maestro Hitchcock’s door and finds nothing inside, save for two halves of an old map, and a beautiful gold candlestick.


End file.
